tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1812431336777691886.post8942376257385197323..comments2024-02-29T03:57:00.088-05:00Comments on The Mermaid's Tale: Here be Dragons: climate change and a lesson from the pastAnne Buchananhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09212151396672651221noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1812431336777691886.post-24118544940132500382013-11-20T17:06:14.537-05:002013-11-20T17:06:14.537-05:00'Cheap oil' is an outcome of cheap credit....'Cheap oil' is an outcome of cheap credit. Everything that follows from it (shipping of vegetables from New Zealand to New York, TV from China to Texas, global exchange of commodities, etc.) will go away, when cheap credit from Federal Reserves disappears.<br /><br />Why will cheap credit disappear? It is because the cheap credit that Fed distributes is taken from the pension savings of baby boomer generation. Once the boomers pass their peak working age, they will take more out than they put in, and the cheap credit will be very, very expensive, leading to extremely cheap oil that nobody will be able to afford.Manoj Samantahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04264467983614167240noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1812431336777691886.post-78977920624840889102013-11-20T14:05:33.397-05:002013-11-20T14:05:33.397-05:00Much of what is going on regarding global warming ...Much of what is going on regarding global warming is scare-mongering and bad science as explained by your sentence - "unfortunately, the public doesn’t like the former ". Many scientist take that as 'scientists should do scare-mongering to convince public', but we believe the physical scientists should take no part in it beyond what is truthfully described by their science including all the inherent ambiguities, because it hurts and will hurt their credibility. <br /><br />When a journal like Nature publishes a bullshit paper to forecast what will happen to the earth in 2080 and call it science, that is abomination of scientific methods. I could sit in 1880 and see the expansion of horse-buggies to 'forecast' that the earth would be filled with horse-shit in 1980. Economic forecasts like that have many limitations and they should be properly described as economic forecasts and not science.Manoj Samantahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04264467983614167240noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1812431336777691886.post-84658965896239902262013-11-20T10:47:56.363-05:002013-11-20T10:47:56.363-05:00You're right, Reed, that the key issue is how ...You're right, Reed, that the key issue is how risk is perceived. You and I might think that the probably costs of continued warming are too great to bear, others might be equally convinced that the decline in (cost to) Western consumption needed to avoid those less-than-certain costs of warming are too great to bear. The deeper political problem is that those two costs are borne by distinct groups of people: poor people, including those in the developing world, will disproportionately bear the costs of warming, whereas rich people in the industrialized world will bear the "costs" of reining in consumption. Guess which group has greater political power.Jim Woodnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1812431336777691886.post-21846120576455102202013-11-20T10:35:17.193-05:002013-11-20T10:35:17.193-05:00Nice post, Reed. You raise a number of key issues...Nice post, Reed. You raise a number of key issues about when, how, whether, or where agriculture is itself not good, and how those facts may affect our view of our current situation.Ken Weisshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02049713123559138421noreply@blogger.com